Do you have an account of surface level versus deep intuitions? How can you tell them apart? And do you think other ethicists just don’t know the difference? If so, why not? If not, what’s the explanation for the dominance of common sense theorizing then?
This article is fun and the argument is clever! But I think that commonsense moralists should think that some superficial intuitions can be given up, though the deeper one's shouldn't. I think they'd claim that intuitions about organ harvesting, for example, are deeper and more rigorous than more abstract higher-level intuitions about what matters.
First, if you're not a moral realist you might believe that morality is just summarizing our moral intuitions. It may turn out that there is a an underlying structure that does a very good job of compressing all the data of our moral intuitions, but there need not be. And even if so, you'd be justified in regarding the intuitions as primary: the structure is just a convenient summary. This is completely compatible with a belief that there is an external world that does indeed have a non trivial underlying structure.
And if you are a divine command sort of person, you might believe that God granted us our moral intuitions directly, in a way that he didn't grant us infallible senses or physical intuition.
The second of these is (IMO, though I suspect it's actually pretty popular) kind of silly, but I think both illustrate that it's possible, and maybe even justifiable to have different opinions on both the existence of an underlying structure, and its relationship to our intuitions, with respect to morality and physics.
My guess is that many commonsense moralists are a bit of a mix of the two types I discuss above: if I think of where my impulse up being a commonsense moralist comes from, I'd say something like, our moral intuitions are just (biologically and or culturally) evolved responses to help us live in social groups; there's no reason to believe there's that much of a deeper structure, and if there is, there's no guarantee that it tracks with the sorts of things we think of our moral theory as doing (helping us live together).
Our intuitions are evolved to do the things we want them to do; any theory underlying them is either illusory, or might not do what we want to it to do, so better to trust the intuitions. At best, we should think systematically in cases where we don't have strong intuitions, or where our intuitions conflict.
I don't exactly believe the above, but I have some sympathy with it. Like, I have a systematic bent, and I think our intuitions are messy and conflicting enough that we are basically obliged to do a hefty amount of systematic moral thinking anyway, but there's also a part of me that thinks that systematizing morality is a bit like systematizing aesthetic preferences--if someone tells me that the only systematic theory of my taste in movies means that I shouldn't like some movie that I do in fact like, I'd tell them...well, something rude that I won't type out. My actual likes are primary, any attempt to make them coherent is just data compression that has no normative force.
Could you clarify what a “commonsense” approach to morality is? I’m a bit puzzled as to what is meant by “commonsense” in this context and how one determines which moral view is or isn’t commonsense.
"Whereas commonsense moralists insist on a theory that accommodates everyday moral verdicts (no matter how baseless or incoherent these turn out to be)." No they don't.
Do you have an account of surface level versus deep intuitions? How can you tell them apart? And do you think other ethicists just don’t know the difference? If so, why not? If not, what’s the explanation for the dominance of common sense theorizing then?
This article is fun and the argument is clever! But I think that commonsense moralists should think that some superficial intuitions can be given up, though the deeper one's shouldn't. I think they'd claim that intuitions about organ harvesting, for example, are deeper and more rigorous than more abstract higher-level intuitions about what matters.
A few thoughts on this:
First, if you're not a moral realist you might believe that morality is just summarizing our moral intuitions. It may turn out that there is a an underlying structure that does a very good job of compressing all the data of our moral intuitions, but there need not be. And even if so, you'd be justified in regarding the intuitions as primary: the structure is just a convenient summary. This is completely compatible with a belief that there is an external world that does indeed have a non trivial underlying structure.
And if you are a divine command sort of person, you might believe that God granted us our moral intuitions directly, in a way that he didn't grant us infallible senses or physical intuition.
The second of these is (IMO, though I suspect it's actually pretty popular) kind of silly, but I think both illustrate that it's possible, and maybe even justifiable to have different opinions on both the existence of an underlying structure, and its relationship to our intuitions, with respect to morality and physics.
My guess is that many commonsense moralists are a bit of a mix of the two types I discuss above: if I think of where my impulse up being a commonsense moralist comes from, I'd say something like, our moral intuitions are just (biologically and or culturally) evolved responses to help us live in social groups; there's no reason to believe there's that much of a deeper structure, and if there is, there's no guarantee that it tracks with the sorts of things we think of our moral theory as doing (helping us live together).
Our intuitions are evolved to do the things we want them to do; any theory underlying them is either illusory, or might not do what we want to it to do, so better to trust the intuitions. At best, we should think systematically in cases where we don't have strong intuitions, or where our intuitions conflict.
I don't exactly believe the above, but I have some sympathy with it. Like, I have a systematic bent, and I think our intuitions are messy and conflicting enough that we are basically obliged to do a hefty amount of systematic moral thinking anyway, but there's also a part of me that thinks that systematizing morality is a bit like systematizing aesthetic preferences--if someone tells me that the only systematic theory of my taste in movies means that I shouldn't like some movie that I do in fact like, I'd tell them...well, something rude that I won't type out. My actual likes are primary, any attempt to make them coherent is just data compression that has no normative force.
Could you clarify what a “commonsense” approach to morality is? I’m a bit puzzled as to what is meant by “commonsense” in this context and how one determines which moral view is or isn’t commonsense.
"Whereas commonsense moralists insist on a theory that accommodates everyday moral verdicts (no matter how baseless or incoherent these turn out to be)." No they don't.